As a Single Lady Alone on Valentines Day

blessed be the young, who are tangled up in rich with lust and longing, locked in a languid exploration into the depths of another, unaware of dangers ahead;

blessed be the old married couple, who have obliterated all their secrets, years kneading together into a comfortable intimacy;

blessed be the broken-hearted, who mine the labyrinths of their own souls, excavating chunks of pain and rage, digging for meaning behind such catastrophic endings — who crawl from the grimy depths into the light, carrying the fragile, glinting hope of love still uncrushed in the palm of their hands;

blessed be the strangers, who lock liquor hazy eyes in an invitation of smiles and lingering touches, fingertips on forearm, drawing one another into a night of coiled limbs and knotted sheets and a bitter-sweet morning of pleasure or regret;

blessed be the solitude seekers, who long only for quiet contemplation and deeper understanding of self;

blessed be the angry, the depressed, the sorrowful, the lost, who fear they have fallen from the path of love, wandering so far into the woods of loneliness they no longer believe such a path exists;

blessed be the artists, who in their love of the world breath in its pain and passions and exhale them as myth and beauty upon page, canvass, tapestry, screen;

blessed be the scientists, who perceive love from the mount of knowledge, witnessing its compilation chemical reactions, pheromones and synapses swirling in a complex network of biology;

blessed be the mating of atoms, who spawn molecules, colliding to form cells, tissue, nerves, veins — shaping humanity and gravel, shale, and stone — rolling into mountains housing leaves, roots, trees — gathering into forests fed by water falling into ponds, streams, oceans — all the weft and fabric of the Earth;

blessed be the Earth, who so loved the sun, it bound itself in centrifugal orbit — for love is gravity;

blessed be the sun, who so loved the universe, it burned with a light that stretched deep into the void of space, softly stroking distant worlds thousands of light years away — for love is light;

blessed be the universe — for the universe itself is love.

As a human being alone, it is easy to forget the heart is more then sinew, more than ventricles and muscle, more than an engine pumping blood. The heart is expansive — capable of holding in perpetual eternity a moment, able to stretch wide, broadening to embrace worlds upon worlds within its every beat.

As a single lady along, I say, though we may never find the One True Love promised us in fairy tales, we may come at last to learn that Love itself is true.